I was so sure I
could hold my own all right. Oh, what fools girls are!" Ellen went off
into another doleful wail. "Of course he had given hints before and I
had always let on I didn't understand him. But tonight he came right out
with it. He put it straight up to me and when I wouldn't, oh, I can't
tell you the awful things he said!"

George breathed hard. "So he's that kind of a scoundrel, is he?"

"And, George," Ellen wept, "I'm not that kind of a girl! Honest I'm not!
Am I, Rosie?"

Rosie, frozen and miserable, with a sickening realization of how things
were going to end, was still looking straight ahead. She wanted to
answer Ellen's question with a truthful, "I am sure I don't know what
kind of a girl you are!" but something restrained her and she said
nothing.

Ellen seemed hardly to expect an answer, for she went on immediately:
"I've been a fool, George, an awful fool; I see that now; but I've
always been straight--honest I have! You can ask everybody that knows
me!"

George was breathing with difficulty. "I'd like to get at that Hawes
fellow for about five minutes! Will he be in his office tomorrow, around
noon?"

Ellen wrung protesting hands. "No, George, you won't do any such thing!
I won't let you! You'll only get pulled in! Besides, he was right!
Leastways, he was in some things! Of course I knew what he was always
hinting about but honest, George, I didn't know the rest!"

"What didn't you know?"

"I didn't know my work was so bad that he'd been getting it done over
every day! I know I'm pretty poor at it. I know perfectly well why I was
never able to keep a job. But he kept saying that I suited him just
right and I was such a fool that I thought I did.... And, George, we
were having supper at one of those sporty places out on the Island. I
knew it wasn't a nice place, but I thought it was all right because I
had an escort. And he kept talking louder and louder until the people at
the other tables could hear and they began laughing and joking. Then
some one shouted, 'Throw her out!' and I got so frightened I could
hardly stand up. I don't know how I got away. And, George, I hadn't
enough money in my bag for a ticket on the boat and some man gave me a
dime...."

The car went on with scarcely a stop the whole way out. Occasionally the
motorman looked back, inquisitive to know what the matter was but too
far away to hear. Some time before they reached the end of the route,
Ellen had finished her